Buckeye teen identified 44 years after White Tanks discovery

A Buckeye teenager whose remains were found in the White Tank Mountains in 1982 has been identified as Mitchell John Pauli, closing a 44-year gap in one of Maricopa County’s long-running unidentified-person cases.

The DNA Doe Project announced the identification on Oct. 6. The nonprofit said Pauli was born in St. Louis and was last known to be living in Buckeye, about five miles from where his remains were later found. He is believed to have been about 14 when he disappeared in the late 1970s.

What investigators knew in 1982

Air Force personnel discovered a skull and vertebrae on April 22, 1982, while searching for a fallen gun pod in a remote part of White Tank Mountain Regional Park, according to the DNA Doe Project. No clothing or personal items were found.

Forensic examiners estimated that the remains belonged to a boy between 13 and 19 who had died one to three years before the discovery. The case was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System as UP15702 and remained publicly known as “John Maricopa County Doe.”

The agency of jurisdiction is the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office.

How the identification was made

The medical examiner’s office brought the case to the DNA Doe Project with support from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which funded laboratory work and the database upload fee. Astrea Forensics conducted the lab work, and genetic matches came through GEDmatch Pro, the nonprofit said.

Volunteer investigative genetic genealogists began research in May 2026. They found that the unidentified boy had ancestral roots in Germany and more recent connections to Missouri and Kentucky. The team narrowed the search to St. Louis and found a boy born there in 1964 whose family moved to Buckeye in 1967.

Connections between Pauli’s ancestors and the unidentified boy’s DNA matches led the team to submit Pauli as a candidate. Additional DNA testing by the medical examiner’s office confirmed the identification, according to the nonprofit.

The genealogical research took seven days to produce the candidate, although the later confirmation process extended beyond that initial work.

What the identification does and does not establish

The announcement restores Pauli’s name and establishes where he lived before his death. It does not explain the circumstances of his disappearance or how he died. The DNA Doe Project’s case page does not list a cause or manner of death, and it does not say whether law enforcement is conducting a new investigation into those questions.

The remains were found inside White Tank Mountain Regional Park, a nearly 30,000-acre county park west of the Phoenix metropolitan area. The discovery location was described only as a remote area of the park.

The case page now lists the former John Doe record as identified and gives Pauli’s name, ending more than four decades in which the teenager was known only by a case designation.